Archive for the ‘review zweigelt’ Category

Pepper and Spice, and Everything Nice? Winzer Krems Zweigelt

austriaOK, I’d like to lay a bet. I’ll bet that if I took any given group of, say, 20 American wine geeks, only one of them would have any clue what ZWEIGELT is. Or maybe none of them!

It sounds like a German sausage. Or maybe a German automobile — “The new Zweigelt goes from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds and gets 40 miles to the gallon on the Autobahn.”

So what is it? Well, Zweigelt is the name of a grape grown in Austria. It’s a hybrid, created by crossing Blaufrankisch (a German red grape that’s not exactly a household name, either) with Saint Laurent (I thought it was a river, not a grape). Zweigelt, or Blauer Zweigelt, was engineered to thrive in Austria’s relatively cool climate.

I recently came across Winzer Krems Blauer Zweigelt St. Severin 2010, and explored it with some trepidation. Without any context clues except “cool climate red wine,” I was surprised to see the wine pour out deep burgundy colored and almost opaque. This was way more extraction than I’d expected, almost like a Petite Sirah.

The nose was also intriguing. I got some tart cherry fruit, but the really obvious aroma was black pepper. And I mean intense black pepper. This wine could make you sneeze! There was also a note of tar (yes, like in “road tar”). Read the rest of this entry »

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